Here's what I ended up submitting. Please tell me if you think it's trash or not. DO NOT be afraid to be brutally honest.

So I’m sitting at my desk having pushed my deadline to the point where I can actually hear it breaking, I’ve gotten input from some of my dealer clients about topics important to them, and I still can’t figure out what to write about. It started while having coffee with my wife this morning as we watched the talking heads deliver the latest barrage of tragedies. They got into my head a little bit as the news got worse. I noticed that my attitude mirrored the downward spiral spewed forth on the tube. (So if you haven’t figured it out yet, I’ll be preaching and not teaching this month. If you don’t read my preachy-er columns go ahead and turn the page now. See you next month.)

An oil spill that nobody is stepping up to fix, a violently chaotic stock market [pronounced: Casino] which stole billions of dollars from shareholders a few weeks ago during a “glitch”, republicans versus democrats versus tea party versus the unions versus… What the heck are we putting up with here?

Have the laws that we’ve allowed our “law makers” to heap on top of other laws to correct what they didn’t like about those laws, which were written to counteract other poorly written (or obsolete) laws, become such a tangled mass of moral spaghetti that we can no longer make intelligent decisions based on just doing the right thing?

So then, after coffee, I read an email from a friend and long time dealer. He’s wondering if he’s going to be able to ride this thing out. He’s done all the responsible things; cut expenses, invested in training, renegotiated every contract he has, kept his inventory moving quickly, etc. His fear is that the sound decision making he’s made for the life of his business will be superseded by the need to keep his business viable. Will he have to sell his soul to stay afloat?

All of this morning’s input got me very introspective. I have a few decisions to make about the projects I’m considering right now. I’m looking at two; one a software development thing, and the other a long term dealership training initiative. Am I going to make my decisions based solely on money? Am I committed to doing the right thing at all costs? Will I have to choose between the two?

So what do I hope to contribute to your business with all this self analyzing psychobabble; this preaching? Who knows; inspiration maybe? Maybe writing this month’s column is just for me. All I know is that by the time you’re reading it, things will have either stabilized or they’ll have gotten worse, but either way they’ll be different than they are today.

I’ve always run my business with this in mind: You must be profitable to operate honorably, and you must also operate honorably if you’re gonna be profitable. If I can’t work within the tension of that paradox, am I left only with one option to keep my business profitable; that of being a thief?

But I don’t think we take back our industry by making decisions that we wouldn’t make if we had all the money we needed. I, for one, will continue to make any such decisions, both personal and business, in which doing the right thing is challenged, by doing the right thing… regardless of the costs.

I’ll quote my friend’s email, “I am taking a stand to make all decisions based on doing the right thing regardless of the financial fallout. If nothing else, whether my business survives or not, it’ll be good practice for the future.”

Me too.

Handling "Heat"

I learned the following method at a Service Advisor seminar I attended when I was a kid. It’s probably the only thing I took away from that seminar, but it’s served me very well for years.

When handling “Heat” from an angry customer, remember one thing.

DO NOT TALK… Listen!!

The angry customer will tell his story three times. Listen silently as he does. Don’t respond with anything but eye contact. Don’t even “Okie-doke” the guy or say, “I see” or “I understand”. Don’t ask him to clarify anything (until later). At the end of his third time through, the most amazing thing happens, he will stop talking completely. He does this for a few reasons. Please allow me to borrow from the language of “theatre-ease” and explain those reasons as three events. I’ll call them the Rehearsal, the Performance, and the Finale.

• 
  The Rehearsal: The first time through his story he’ll be ranting, he’ll be emotional, and he won’t have his routine rehearsed well enough. So he’ll have to recount the entire ordeal a second time. It is critical not to engage him while he is emotional. Just listen. Hey, for the last fifteen minutes on his drive to your dealership, he’s been practicing what he’s gonna say to you. And the more he gets fired up, the more he has to remember, and the more he’s gonna read you the riot act when he sees you. Now he’s in front of you and here comes...


• 
  The Performance: This is his second time through; where he’ll say the more clever things he rehearsed in the car. He is so focused at this point; he has nothing else on his mind and he’s just about through. He may catch a second wind here, and really be mean.
  


• The Finale: The third time through is the, “And another thing!” session. And, fueled by emotion, he is likely to say the more insulting things he thought of in the car during the Rehearsal but forgot to throw in during the performance. Again, do NOT respond until he’s done.

Now when the Finale is over, the whole thing will probably end rather abruptly. Here’s why. For the last half hour, this guy has been focused on one thing and one thing only; telling YOU what YOU did wrong. Once he’s got it all out of his head, he is left with nothing more to say – no more unexpressed emotion, and the result is basically silence… …because for the last half hour, he hasn’t been sending anything else into his mental pipeline.

This is when you’ve got the opportunity of a lifetime. Until this very moment, you’ve had a problem to deal with, and nothing with which to fix it. Now, after he has emptied his anger, and before anything else can cloud his head, is when you speak. You get to place the first thing into his drained pipeline.

And you convey to him two things, and only two things; empathy, and a solution. Why? Two reasons; one, because all he wants is empathy and a solution, and two, because he deserves empathy and a solution.

Here’s how we were taught to respond in the Service Advisor seminar. “Mr. Customer, I think I understand how you feel. Here’s how I’d like to offer to resolve the issue.” And then offer a resolution. You’ve told him, on his terms, by addressing his emotion (I think I understand how you FEEL) that you empathize with him. You’ve also told him that a solution to his issue is as important to you as it is to him.

My brother worked as an Assistant Principal in charge of discipline at a high school where he met often with parents appalled that their little angels had broken any rules and were being punished. After one particularly grueling session he called me on his way home to download the event so as not to unleash his pent up fury on his wife and kids over spaghetti and garlic bread. It seemed that he’d tried multiple times with no success to get a word in edgewise during little Johnny’s defense case.

Each time he’d attempted to inject some reason into the conflict, the flames would shoot further out of Dad’s eyes while the filth from his cake-hole got filthier, and Mommy’s head turned 360’s faster and more violently on the end of her neck with each attempted “but…but…” that my brother tried to squeeze in.

As I tried to do my brotherly best to sympathize, the lesson from the Service Advisor seminar began to echo in my head. So I shared it with my struggling sibling in hopes of helping him bring down his stomach acid.

He liked it. He tried it. He was absolutely amazed by the results. From that point forward, my brother found himself dealing with much more reasonable and cooperative parents on a regular basis. That made his disciplinary actions much more effective because he was now able to collaborate with the parents to affect real changes in the kids being disciplined.

Now he told me later that he had to develop a few mental tricks so he wouldn’t interrupt while his attackers did the three round exercise; counting backwards from 1,372,416 by threes always seemed to help. Listen, I know how hard it is to hear that your customers have been failed by your company. And I know how much harder it is when your team did the right thing for the customer and the customer just doesn’t agree.

Will this method work perfectly every time, you might ask? Nope. But here’s my counter question to you. Will it hurt you to try? If you do it right—from the heart—I’m convinced that it can help you can change your corner of the world. You might just make it a little better place to be.

I dare you.

Who is Joe Jones?

Once again, I need your input. Is this an important enough concept that it'll help anyone???

Please... LEAVE COMMENTS!!!

Joe Jones is two different people. Yup, the Joe Jones who walks into the grocery store has a set amount of money that he’ll allow himself to spend; it’s called a budget. He doesn’t necessarily want to spend that money, but he knows he has to. Just like with his house payment, his car payment, etc.
But when that same Joe Jones walks into our realm, he has a much different stack of money to spend; money he wants to spend; money he will absolutely spend… on… something! This money has somehow magically escaped his budget—the needs that he must feed—and now he gets to make some sort of a selfish purchase.
This same guy is NOT the same guy. This is the guy we’re not getting, not because our stuff isn’t cool, but because we’re too often treating him like the other Joe Jones; one who will make decisions from a budget; from an “I have to spend this money” mentality.
I believe that more often than not, the purchase of some of our bigger ticket items just might be the single most selfish act in the life of our customer. Selfish? Well, you tell me. I submit that even the farmer who buys one of our side-by-sides or ATV’s to work on the farm only chooses it because it’s more fun than a tractor!! A tractor is much more easily justified; it’s a necessary expense; a cost of doing business. But an ATV… well they’re just cool!
I’m pretty convinced that some of the success that John Deere enjoys with some of their utility vehicles is because they’re more fun than functional. I’m just saying that in nearly every case, what we have in front of us is a customer who is hoping to justify a purchase that is selfish. …and that changes EVERYTHING!!!
You can’t ask the Joe Jones in the grocery store to buy ice cream if it isn’t in his budget. But the Joe Jones who walks into a motorcycle dealership is looking for a reason to buy the “ice cream”, and more importantly, he’s looking for someone who will tell him its okay!
________________________________________
People need to give themselves permission to buy our stuff. It’s our job to help them give that permission to themselves. They come in our doors to see if we’re worthy of granting them permission to do something selfish. They’re also looking for someone who will ask them to make that decision; to “give” them permission.
They need that permission because they’re often stuck in the rut of having told themselves “NO” for all the right reasons for so long.

Pricing "Policy" or "Process"?

The following is an excerpt of what I wrote as a comment a discussion about discount pricing. Please leave your comments below and vote whether or not you like it, hate it, whatever. Tell me whether I should turn it into a column. Thanks in advance.

Tim is living in the real world; a word most consultants never see. Scott used a very specific word, "compete". Notice there's a big difference between the word "compete" and the word "competitive". For definition's sake, the verb "to compete" is proactive and indicates that there is a process for doing so. On the other hand, being "competitive" can only be executed as policy NOT process. A discount pricing policy is passive and passive won't keep the doors open in this market.

There must be a willingness and a capacity to effectively negotiate on price, or in essence, to compete.

For most dealers, building value is the best mechanism they have for making the sale when price is an issue. While it should indeed be the first response, it shouldn't be the only available solution. Dealers living in the real world, like Tim, must accommodate the price shopper if they’re going to survive. (Remember, it really is a small minority of the people we view as price shoppers, a mere 16%, that make their buying decision based on price alone.) But if you can't engage price shoppers, you have no way to accommodate customers that buy elsewhere but might have bought from us had we simply engaged in a negotiation and given them an opportunity to adjust both their thinking and ours.

Make no mistake about this; I am by no means advocating being a discount dealer. I'm against discounting as a policy. What I'm advocating, what we teach, is a process designed to allow us to have substantive conversations with customers who are perceived as price shoppers so as to allow us consistent opportunities to earn the business of those customers; possibly by adjusting our pricing on a case by case basis. Policy will rarely even allow those conversations to take place, and it's the conversations that make the sale when prices need to be adjusted.

And there endeth today's rant! Thanks for putting up with me, folks.

Discussion: Motorcycle Dealers Network | LinkedIn

Discussion: Motorcycle Dealers Network | LinkedIn

Otis' RFTD (Rant For The Day)

This was a response to a discussion on LinkedIn. Click HERE to link to that discussion.


Please leave me your thoughts below this post as to whether or not I should turn this into a column. Thanks a bunch.

Let's be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water, Carolyn. There are some really good practices that "outside, non-enthusiast" folks have brought to the industry; practices without which more dealerships may have fallen by the wayside by now. In my opinion, far too many powersports dealers have two things in common with most bar owners: one, they were standing right next to the last owner at the exact moment he got fed up, and two, they were under the influence of the product being served, and thereby not in their right mind.

Don't get me wrong, I completely believe that enthusiasm is a crucial component, but not the sole requirement, of success in this business. I'm also a rider and have been for most of my life. But I want this industry to survive, and it can't without the sound business practices lacking in so many enthusiast oriented industries. There must be a balance.

As a customer, I absolutely want the guy at the scuba shop to know how to make my breathing apparatus work, but I don't particularly care if the kid at the music store can play the guitar or not. (FYI: I spend way too much money at the music store, and frankly, even if I could swim better, I still wouldn't go scuba diving.)

But neither of those two things matter to me as a customer. If the kid at the music store appropriately asks me to buy, I'm more likely to buy than if the expert at the scuba store gives me a perfect expert presentation and neglects to ask for the sale. Asking for the sale is a process that frankly most enthusiasts don't see a need for; after all they love it and think everyone else should too. Asking for the sale must be done on purpose, and that, when it's made policy, is the kind of thing that "outsiders" have brought to the mix.

And there endeth my rant for the day!

What are we hiding?

Is this a column worth submitting to the magazine?

PLEASE LEAVE COMMENTS!!! I need feedback.

I’m not sure what I want to accomplish with this. Just let me ramble a few minutes and maybe I’ll figure it out. The encounter I’m going to try to relate showed some very strong elements of a great sales process. I saw everything from a well executed sales procedure, to evidence of good sales training, to good salesmanship, to good sales management systems. I think the thing that hit me the hardest though was the fact that the people in this company were so open and honest about their sales procedure, as though they had nothing to hide, that it allowed me to let my guard down as a customer. I knew they were trying to make a sale, and I was perfectly okay with it.

Let me set the scene. One of our clients has a rather disjointed cashiering system and I had heard that an unnamed chain of music stores has an excellent system so I went into one of their stores near my house to observe. The following is an account of what I experienced when I walked through their door. Now remember, I’m here to observe, NOT to buy anything.

Within a matter of seconds, I was greeted by about half a dozen smiling faces, all equipped with a warm friendly natural sounding, but uncannily similar greeting. I was asked by one particular employee if I had come in to look at anything specific and when I responded that I hadn’t, he announced that he would help me get my bearings by giving me a quick tour of the place. We ended up in the pro audio room, where they keep all the big sound reinforcement systems. (I have this fantasy about putting a concert quality sound system in my living room.) The salesperson again announced his intentions and sort of set the agenda for what was next by saying, “Let me give you a few minutes to look around, and I’ll be right back to help you with any questions.”

I thought his whole approach was really very cool. He simply told me, with both his words and his actions, that he knew what I was there to do, that it was his job to help me do it, and that he fully intended to do so. This guy was so comfortable with his sales procedure that he was not only NOT hiding it from me; he was letting me in on it.

When he came back, he asked me questions, he listened to my answers, he showed me a few things he thought I might like based on those answers, starting with the lower priced stuff in the category and then moving up in price until the point when I asked, “How much?” Then he gave me a comprehensive presentation of the system he thought I liked the most and calmly and unobtrusively asked me to buy it. When I hesitated, he simply asked me some more questions, listened some more, and then formulated a “Magic Question” (If I could, would ya?) based on my objections, and asked me to buy again by using that question. He was operating so naturally and so up front about it, I was blown away. I wanted one, he wanted me to have one, and he made no bones about it.

When I looked to Mrs. Hackett for approval and got none, (You married guys know the look) I told him that we would have to wait till I got home from my next road trip before I could fit it in the budget. He then announced that he would like to put me into his follow-up system so that he could get in touch with me when I returned.

Again, he had absolutely nothing to hide from me. He even took me around behind the counter and explained how their follow-up system worked as he entered my information into the computer. It was designed much like our Day Planner system in that the Manager would help determine the next action to be taken, hold daily meetings with each salesperson to help them plan how to best complete those actions, and get reports as to how each customer was treated, how far they got through the buying process, and what the final results were. Now for the coolest part; he did all of this before he knew that I did sales training, and once he found out that I was, he made absolutely no changes in his approach. He was so confident with his sales procedure, that he was okay with me knowing that he was working a sales procedure.

Now I’m not so sure that the only reason I was aware of what he was doing throughout the entire encounter was because I do sales training. I think the reason I could see what was happening was that he had no reason to hide what was happening. He was trying to help me get the sound system I wanted… so what’s to hide? By showing me his follow-up system, he was telling me that he wanted me to have one when I’m ready, and when I am, he wants me to buy it from him. And it was working!

My wife and I wandered around the showroom for a few minutes trying to figure out a way to shuffle some money around to make this thing happen. I know this doesn’t sound like anything too remarkable, but let me remind you of something. I went in the place to observe a cashiering system and suddenly I’m trying to buy a sound system. Man, if ever a customer came in and was really “Just looking”, it was me. Now I found myself wanting so badly to buy something from this guy that I was trying really hard to do so… and I walked in the door with no intentions whatsoever of buying. And now even my wife wanted to buy the system! How often does that happen?

I think that all too often as salespeople, we try to hide from our customers the fact that we want them to buy something from us. It’s almost like we have this technique carried over from when we were trying to pick up girls and we didn’t want them to know that we were trying to pick them up. It’s like the Wizard of Oz hiding behind the curtain.

What these guys did so amazingly well was what I try to preach all the time; he wants one, and I want him to have one. So why is it that we try to hide the fact that we want our customers to have one and that we have a process for helping them get one? Is it just me?

The Dealer of the Future.

This is something I wrote a few years ago. Please let me know if you think it's still applicable. Also please leave comments and rate it at the bottom if you would. Thanks in advance.

Things have changed. They told us that things were gonna change… but they lied – things have already changed. The two big changes are Harley has overstayed its welcome, and the nation’s economy is facing challenges. The doom and gloom merchants, masquerading as announcers on the evening news, are telling us out one side of their mouths that our economy is getting its butt kicked. All the while the Wizard of Oz, the advertisers behind the screen, are doing everything in their power, including spinning (pronounced “manipulating”) the news, hoping we’ll borrow more money from them than we can possibly pay back.

Good news is that things are always changing and the people here in the real world know that. We’ve known things were changing for the last eighteen years while Harley dealers have been breathing the rare air of Never-land. But alas, things have changed in Never-land and they’re gonna have to start living life like the rest of the motorcycle world. There are actually dealers devastated by the idea that they may be forced to accept offers as low as MSRP, while right across the street, there’s an import dealer who would give the birthrights to his firstborn to get MSRP.

I don’t think it’s gonna be much harder to buy a motorcycle because of what’s happened in this weird economy, I just think that it’s gonna be the best and most customer oriented salesperson that will help the customer feel good about pulling the trigger.

For every dealer wringing his hands about the coming market trend, there’s another one licking his chops at the prospect of watching the competition go the way of the dodo bird for lack of the systems and processes to do things on purpose.

I’m actually excited to see who will emerge on the other side of whatever we’re going though as an industry. I don’t know all of their names but I DO know that they operate with purpose and conviction that good people equipped with good process will produce extraordinary results during extraordinary times. And make no mistake – these are extraordinary times that we’re headed into.

Don’t take away from this rant some prediction that you can hold me accountable for one day. I have no idea what the coming weird economic adventure odyssey will be other than… well… an adventure. It will be dangerous, exciting, scary… you know… just like life itself.

Two of our clients were in the bicycle business before coming to the motorcycle business. They both told me that the big manufacturers promised they’d never sell their bikes through any other medium than retail bicycle shops; the independent guys with a profile similar to that of the average motorcycle dealer of today. Then the third world brands started showing up everywhere from Wal-Mart to the local mower shop and before you could sneeze, it was nearly over. Sound familiar?

Here are a few characteristics of the dealers that will survive the next phase of change and be positioned to capitalize:
 They’ll be very much in the used bike business. We’ve always recommended that dealers strive to reach a 2 to 1 new to used ratio. In the future, it may take a 1 to 1 or even higher ratio to both have and control your inventory. Being in the used bike business keeps OEMs honest by helping you to control your inventory based on your agenda instead of blindly letting the OEMs push their agenda. The great dealers will have a healthy at-arms-length relationship with the OEMs. They don’t swallow everything out of the mouth of the manufacturer just because the “Factory Rep said so”. If the latest greatest program makes sound business sense, participate. If it doesn’t create a win/win for you and the OEM, DON’T!
 They’ll be in 20 groups. If you’re not comparing yourself to other dealers in the business, how can you possibly know “how good ‘good’ is”? You can only know whether you’re doing better or worse than you’ve done before. It’s a great thing to have an internal yard-stick, but it won’t tell you where you can improve your operation.
 They’ll take sales training very seriously. Accommodating people don’t sell stuff. They merely accommodate people. You need to have a way to ask every single customer to buy. The more standardized your method for doing so, the more control you’ll have and the more likely you’ll be to actually get it done.
 They’ll have sales processes for every department in the dealership with Traffic Logs at every retail counter in the dealership so they can measure all the elements of each sales process.
 They’ll market differently as well. They’ll quit trying to reach people with traditional (pronounced “old and moldy”) sources of advertising such as print, television and radio. They’ll reach people who’ve shown interest in powersports products – the people on their Traffic Logs. They’ll also use what we now see as “unconventional” methods like texting, blogging, and other “viral” marketing strategies; methods that will be considered quite conventional (if not old fashioned) within another five years. Listen, my 23 year old son, our target demographic by the way, doesn’t listen to the radio, he listens to his iPod. And newspaper? That’s the stuff you line the bird cage with, right? He’s NEVER read one. With his TiVO, he skips all the commercials. And he’d rather have a text conversation with me than a phone conversation – we text each other for hours. In short, you can’t reach him using conventional means… period!

Get out in front of this thing. It’s different than most of us have ever seen. It’s scarier than anything we’ve experienced since the late 80’s. And nobody knows what the world will look like on the other side of it. To borrow a surfing illustration, you’re either in front of the wave, or you’re behind it. I can’t promise that if you paddle, you’ll catch this coming wave and ride it successfully to the beach. But I can promise you that if you don’t paddle, you ain’t gonna catch any wave.

So paddle your butts off… I dare you.

Help me out. Is this worth writing about?

The Karma of Currency

I had some thoughts about leadership; weird thoughts, but thoughts nonetheless. Here they are. I feel that there are a number of different currencies that relationships must trade in. One of those currencies is cash, but cash is by no means the only one.

If you want to employ someone to make you money, you've got to invest money in them in the form of a paycheck. Likewise, if you want someone in your company, a manager for example, to become a better leader, you must invest leadership in that manager in order to derive a return. You must be a good leader to them as opposed to being a micro-manager.

If you want believers on your team, you have to believe in them. If you invest faith, faith is what you’ll get in return.

I’m not unrealistic about my assertion; I’ve been burned by many who I’ve employed in the past. I’ve invested leadership, energy, faith, and cash in people who have taken it all and given no significant return. But the one thing that those broken relationships have in common is that they ended because of money issues, not the intangible currencies.

So tell me, is it worth the effort to develop this thought?